Hello and welcome everyone to Shawn's Horror Movie Review Blog. I hope you might stick around for a little info on some of my favorite horror films and some of the recent horror films I will be seeing. I have been looking for a long time for a good place to post a blog about my horror movie thoughts and i figured, hey, why not just start here. So here it goes with my first title I will be talking about.

Chopping Mall

Rated: R

Release: 1986

Now I can be the first to admit that I'm a sucker for some off the wall, borderline bad horror movies. Depending on your outlook of this film it can be off the wall and borderline bad. I however love it.

The story takes place in an American shopping mall in the mid 1980's. Now if your a part of the younger generation and have never been to a shopping mall in the 1980's probably up until the mid 1990's anyone can tell you a mall was a place to be. The story is focused around a group of teenagers who decide it would be fun to stay the night in a furniture store after the mall gets locked down for the night. Sounds like some good "innocent" fun there doesn't it? The mall itself has a new security system. Three robots that they will use when the mall closes for the night in order to detract and stop anyone that breaks into the mall in the off hours (what could go wrong here?). Well the night finally arrives, the mall is about to close down when a thunderstorm appears at the mall (yes, a thunderstorm in a horror movie. Who would have thought it?) and lightening strikes a main computer that are tied into operating the 3 robots, who have names as Projector 1, Projector 2 and Projector 3. (Quite original).

The mall is finally closed down for the night. The teenagers begin to have their party and everything is just going great, until one of the teenagers leaves the store to buy a pack of smokes from a machine in the mall. The young man is approached by one of the robots as he is outside of the store. But hey, all is well, he has his identification card that are given to the employees who work late so the robots can tell who the bad guys are. Well after a few smart comments to the robot, he shows he ID card, the robot reads it, and low and behold, that when the Killbots (which was actually another title for Chopping Mall) start their spree. It didn't take the teenagers long to know they were going to be in for a long night as the now "killbots" start picking them off one by one in the mall. Just how do you stop a killer robot in the mid 1980's. Well without giving to much of the ending away let's just say one of the teenagers has a plan you could paint a picture with.

I have to say the climax for this film is very entertaining. Everything about this film screams (no pun intended) off the wall but it sure is a good time to watch. If you can find this little gem I would recommend giving it a watch on a rainy Friday night.

Overall I give this film a 3.5 out of 5 stars. Perhaps if malls weren't going extinct in 2017 we could use some good robots to protect them as they may have thought in the 1980's

If you're still reading this I hope you enjoyed it. I plan to do another installment in a day or two. I will let you choose which film will be talked about next. The options are...

If there weren't any people who could handle seeing those types of things, then we wouldn't have coroners, morticians, surgeons, CSI, and probably a butt load of other jobs... our world would be full of corpses laying around because no one would go near them.

So I sit outside in my lawn chair on a nice sunny day. I'm thinking to myself "So someone voted for The Final to be reviewed next". Not a bad choice. This must be someone who has a mind for more of an art. I can appreciate that. Not only can I appreciate it, I like it. So being that I appreciate an art I will gladly do a review of The Final.

The Final

Rated: R

Release: 2010

A lot of films today have a shock value just to keep your attention. Be that blood, violence, rape, nudity etc. just to keep your attention without having much a story to follow what you are seeing in the picture. Well let me explain this film to you...

We start off in a black and white scene. Not one of those old time black and white scenes but one that sets the films perfectly. A young lady in a burger diner with everyone staring at her. Now before I give to much away let me go on.

We move on to a bunch of teenagers partying (I know, same old same old) in an old what seems to be warehouse or plant. All the popular students from a high school are having a great time and only the cream of the crop would be invited to a party like this. (I don't even know if I would be invited.) Being that it is a Halloween party who would ever find out if some of the more "unpopular" kids were there to mingle with the "popular" crowd. After all, everyone is wearing masks and all. After a little partying and dancing everyone starts to feel kind of woozy (and the fun begins) and they all end up passing out at the same time. (Don't ask me, it was just perfect timing.) After a cut we see all the students at the party in chains to the point where they can't get out and the fun begins.The unpopular and bullied students begin to have their way with the popular students. This includes what seems to be a Japanese ceremony, a mixture of a flesh burning substance and one or two various other ways. (Without giving the whole plot away).If you're looking for a lot of blood I can honestly tell you, this one will only leave you to your imagination.

The Climax is very interesting, used with a liar yet doing it for the good of his friends. He may have been at the party but still the most understandable person I have ever seen in a film. You won't really know who to root for until you see this film.
This is a film where in your mind you will think "I just watched one bloody, gory movie". In reality, after you think about it further, there really wasn't any blood in this movie. And that right there is where I can call this film an artform. You can imagine what you did not see.

Thank you MacC for the suggestion!

I hope these get better as time goes on. Now my question to all of you... has anyone here seen the film My Amityville Horror?

Vote for the next film. Your choices are...
Maximum Overdrive
Jackhammer Massacre
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Yes. Everyone and their mother can tell you how gory that movie was, yet there was really no gore really. Kinda like the original Halloween movie. Yes Michael Meyers was in it, yes he killed people, but if you go rewatch the movie you can notice there isn't much blood in it at all. It's all what your mind picks up. I will try to get to Behind the Mask if that wins out as soon as I can. It's another great one.

There has always been something about horror films that seems to attract a lot of people. What it is in particular I believe will vary by the individual watching. Over the years films have seemed to adapt to the changes in society. Just look at the remakes that have come out, in particular, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You have a movie that for it's time was a very brutal and gruesome movie, yet when it was remade, became a more brutal and gruesome movie.

When you think about it, horror movies can play with your mind, make you think you have seen something more in the end then what you really have, Lets use John Carpenter's Halloween for example. When you think of that movie you can of all the blood and gore that Michael Myers brought to the screen and how frightening it was seeing it. In all reality, if you go back and rewatch that film you will soon realize, there was very little, if any blood really shown in that movie. Your mind fills in the blanks.

Another neat thing about horror is, everyone says "All the sequels to films has the same killer doing the same thing." I love when people say this to me. Jason Voorhees was not the killer in Friday the 13th, nor was he the killer in part 5. Michael Myers was not the killer in Halloween 3. Just some interesting facts there for you all.

That all brings me to my next point here. Did you ever think..."I wonder how the likes of Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers are able to do what they do?" Well you won't have to look much further than...

Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Rated: R

Release: 2006

Now we have all seen the likes of Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Freddy Kruger and Chucky. But what do you get when you make a film as somewhat a tribute with a pretty darn good story to go with it? You get Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon.

This is a film that at the beginning, you may think that you just got suckered into another copycat film. A group of college students who seem to be taking up news production as a major embark to find a man named Leslie Vernon, who supposedly was killed years ago when he was a young man by being thrown off the falls in Glen Echo. The students give us a recap of the other killers showing video snippets of the towns these killers resided. Camp Crystal Lake from the Friday the 13th series, The 1428 Elm Street House as a gentleman is taking the trash out (which was played by Kane Hodder who was Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th VII-X) and a lovely look at Haddonfield, Illinois.

Upon finding Leslie, we learn that this is just like any ordinary man that you would run into at your local grocery store. Except this man has a dark secret. He's training to be one of the notorious killers in history, and he's is using these young students to tell his story. After Leslie shows the students around his home and some of the training that he has been doing he decides to take them out, to show them what he has learned so far. He takes them out, shows them how to scout out the victims and show what characteristics to be looking for in the victims. He then shows them how to get into the mind of your victim by taking them to the local library and playing tricks on a young girl. Finally we get to meet Eugene (Played by Scott Wilson) who we find out, has been teaching Leslie and supporting him in his ventures as he gets closer to becoming the killer he wants to be.

After a while, the students finally start to realize that maybe they can't let Leslie do this. While having a discussion at a local diner, a man who resembles Donald Pleasance as "Dr.Loomis" in the Halloween films approaches with an interest, who introduces himself as Doc Halloran (Played by Robert Englund who plays Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street series) to the group and tells them that Leslie is not who he seems to be. (A killer who isn't who he seems to be? What's worse than that?) The group decides to go back to the library and do some investigating themselves and even talk to the librarian (Who is played by Zelda Rubinstein from Poltergeist) who in her famous "Poltergeist" voice tells the story she knows.

Finally the day has come for Leslie to do what he feels he was meant to in his chosen location. The only problem now is...all those young victims Leslie has scouted during the time the group was with him, mean nothing to Leslie. The group quickly went from documenting a story, to trying to survive the wrath of Leslie Vernon.

Now without giving to much more of this story away, lets just say...

It happened the way Leslie said it would.

And with that, it concludes my review of Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon.

Now I have to tell you, I have done a lot of reviews over the years. But this movie has to be one of the toughest ones I have had to review. Not because there is a lot to the story, but you want to say a lot but you don't want to give a lot away in the process. I never used the group of students names in this review. Not because I don't remember them, but because they were always together in this film. I apologize for that but if you watch, you will notice also. Anyways I hope you enjoyed this review, now let us vote for what's next in the series.